NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL REVIEWS

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL REVIEWS; Emerging From a Coma Into a Beckettian World

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Published: September 25, 1999

Some of the arid humor of Samuel Beckett drifts through Kiyoshi Kurosawa's droll, absurdist ''License to Live,'' a fable about a 24-year-old man who unexpectedly awakens from a decadelong coma and tries to piece together a world that has shattered during his slumber. That world is a far cry from the steel-and-concrete skyscrapers of modern Tokyo. It is more like a giant, sprawling junkyard.

As Yutaka Yoshii (Hidetoshi Nishijima), who finds himself suddenly resurrected, scuffles about trying frantically to resurrect the familiar world of his early adolescence, the film compiles a witty Beckettian vision of human futility. What is life but a desperately, ultimately fruitless attempt to impose lasting order on a universe that is continually spinning apart, leaving behind hideous, ever-growing mountains of detritus. Chronologically Yutaka may be 24, but emotionally he is still a gawky, impulsive adolescent flailing in every direction. He has an almost reflexive habit of lashing out and hitting people, as though the pent-up energy from 10 years of passivity had to be released in random spasms.

Yutaka discovers that the home in which he grew up and where his father operated a miniature dude ranch has been turned into a carp-fishing farm by his father's best friend, Fujimori (Koji Yakusho). Fujimori has a sideline that consists of transporting and illegally dumping toxic materials. Perhaps you have to live in a country as densely populated as Japan to fully appreciate the film's vision of an industrial, fringe-city landscape so overrun with trash that there's no place to put it.

In the years since the car accident that immobilized Yutaka, his family has scattered. His parents have divorced. His father is off pursuing some vague foreign trading scheme, while his mother has moved to Tokyo. His sister, who has only recently returned from the United States, lives with a self-described ''geek'' whose sole possession of value is a bright red sports car.

The most touching moments in this extremely dry-eyed film are Yutaka's attempts to bring his family back together. And eventually he succeeds in constructing a half-baked version of his old life, in which two family members (his mother and sister) return to the property. The dude ranch is rebuilt as a jury-rigged pony ride with an adjoining milk bar. But as Yutaka eventually senses, the past he has recreated is a childhood dream that can't be recaptured.

''License to Live,'' which the New York Film Festival is showing tomorrow at 1:30 P.M. and Monday at 6 P.M. at Alice Tully Hall, is not the first film to wonder what it would be like to be a contemporary Rip Van Winkle. But the metaphysical humor it gleans from the situation marks Mr. Kurosawa (who is no relation to Akira Kurosawa) as a quirky, smart filmmaker. Behind its comedy, the movie portrays life and death as sudden, random events. Once jolted awake, the process of making a life for yourself consists of clearing away the debris and bringing in a semblance of order. Eventually, the trash piled in the corners of your life is likely to tip over and fall right back on you, knocking you flat on your back.

LICENSE TO LIVE

Written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa; in Japanese, with English subtitles; director of photography, Junichiro Hayashi; edited by Masahiro Ohnaga; music by Gary Ashiya; production designer, Tomoyuki Maruo; produced by Tsutomu Tsuchikawa, Satoshi Kanno, Shigeo Fujita and Atsuyuki Shimoda. Shown tomorrow at 1:30 P.M. and Monday at 6 P.M. at Alice Tully Hall as part of the 37th New York Film Festival. Running time: 109 minutes. This film is not rated.